Apache Handlers, running html as php

Apache handlers allow you to control what Apache will do with certain file types. When Apache sees a file, it has an action built in for that file type, and will perform that action.

If you wish Apache to do a different action, you will need to make a handler to tell Apache to perform that action. For example, if you use a file type that requires a special service to run it, such as a file with server side includes that is not named with a .shtml extension, you need to tell Apache to treat these files differently.

To get regular html pages to handle php code, you need to add this line to your htaccess file. 

It is highly recommended that you never allow html pages to automatically handle php or shtml, because this forces all of your html pages to be processed by the server first. Instead, please rename your files to .php or .shtml whenever possible.

System Mime Type defaults